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MPC (Multiple Products Corporation) is the
company probably best known for "pirating" the Marx figures from the 50s. MPC dinos and prehistoric mammals came along in
the 1960s, and are often confused with Marx-osaurs, but surfing around the Dino-Connosieurs o' the Internet will get
you Marx/MPC savvy faster than you can say Ceratogaulus.
As Randy the Dinosaur Collector says, a major difference is color. While
Marx went with more subdued browns olive greens, grays and browns, MPC went for the electric blues, atomic reds, bright greens,
and retina-damaging yellows (okay, those aren't official color-names, I made them up myself).
I should note here that those atomic red dinos are really hard to get
good photos of. Every picture I take of one seems to have a very 'glowy' quality about it, making the features hard to distinguish...
Another good way to tell Marx-osaurs from MPC-osaurs is that MPC tended
to skimp on plastic on many of the figures. Parasaurolophus is a prime example here. Marx's Parasaur, while rather slight
in build, looks like he's on steroids compared to MPC's wispy creature. Another good example is MPC's Glyptodon;
while not a Marx copy, Glypto is completely hollow-bodied.
MPC figures were, you might say, the "poor man's Marx." While not as
high in quality, however, they are still a big collector's item--some of them carrying rather hefty price tags these days.
MPC also did cover some animals (namely, mammals) that Marx did not: Dire Wolf, Glyptodon, Diatryma, Macrauchenia, and Ceratogaulus.
Use your navigation bar there at the left to browse through the MPC pages,
or click below to start through the list alphabetically.
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